It’s not a secret that college textbooks are overpriced. Used, new or rented, the total cost of textbooks that any given student needs for a single quarter (or semester) can range anywhere from $100 to over $1,000.
“Fall quarter, I spent around $1,000 on textbooks,” second year RIT Biomedical Sciences major Leah Pirela said. “I only got about four or five books, too.”
Pirela isn’t the only student at RIT who has had to spend an inordinate amount of money solely on textbooks. Nilan Lovelace, a third year Psychology major, has also gone home with a rather large hole in his wallet after buying his textbooks.
“If I buy them from Amazon, it’s about $300,” Lovelace said. “But if I buy them from Barnes & Noble, it’s about $600.”
With new editions of textbooks coming out nearly every year, it’s no surprise that the average student will spend at least $1,100 on textbooks for the school year. It doesn’t help that by the time students sell back their books, there always seems to be a new edition of the textbook out and they get a few measly bucks at best.
During my time at RIT, I haven’t had to spend too much on books. Granted, that may be mostly because I always hustle some Barnes & Noble gift cards out of family members every summer before I head back to school. But even after using the gift cards, I still pay a couple hundred bucks on three or four books every quarter.
I have a job on campus, and I worked all summer, but I’m still very much a living-paycheck-to-paycheck student – especially since I really don’t make much money. Between the cost of living, sorority dues and school supplies, there really isn’t much left to buy the textbooks I need for class.
Actually, I still haven’t bought the books I need for classes this quarter (We’re now in the seventh week of the quarter at RIT). There are only two books that I need, and they’re not too expensive to rent, but I just can’t afford them right now. I’ve never had to use my textbooks more than a couple times each quarter, so I haven’t worried too much if I couldn’t buy a book for a class.
Bad news is this: it turns out this is the only quarter when I actually need my textbooks. Guess that means I’ll just be spending some more time in the library for the next few weeks until the quarter ends.
This article appears in Jan 23-29, 2013.
Textbook used to put a big hole in my budget too, until I decided to go all digital and hunt down e-versions of the required books. Admittedly, not all were available, but I still managed to save a lot of cash. Probably the most helpful site I found is http://bookboon.com/. The site hosts thousands of textbooks in pdf format, all of which are 100% free and legal for download, so there are no copyright issues either. I recommend it to everyone.
So if you want to save the largest amount on your textbooks, you should consider buying used online via a price comparison website such as FindersCheapers.com, then reselling them directly to students once the quarter is over. The downside is that you will have to get your own free seller account on Amazon Marketplace or Half.com and package and ship the books as each one is purchased. It can also take quite awhile to sell textbooks in your major if there aren’t very many students in the country taking the same classes. The upside is the potential to recoup most of your textbook expenses. I’ve written about this and more in the article at the bottom of this page:
http://finderscheapers.com/textbook-coupon…
Lauren, your readers may also be interested in our new service. We search (including those you mentioned and many more sites) to find the best prices and give you options that include what the buyback price is today. Last month we also launched a safe and secure student-to-student marketplace for local and national sales. By the end of the term, it will be filled with textbooks. The market price changes quickly, so you need to search both our marketplace and use the search engine. Jeff Lorton http://www.campusshift.com/core2/TextbookS…
There are still options for us students to keep up with education. Like for me, I also download e-books from http://bookboon.com/ as the site offers a wide-range of e-books for free that are very helpful for my research and reports.
I never bought books from the Bookstore on campus. I used Alibris.com and Dealoz.com. Saved a quarter to half off my books. And people shouldn’t join fraternties/sororities. They’re a waste of time and their “networking” opportunities are never worth the trade off.